Otherwise, how would you know, looking at the stately Ives Memorial Library and courthouse on Elm Street, that that block was once considered "Quality Row" because of the even more stately houses that once stood there?

Or that the struggling commercial block once known as the Chapel Square Mall, across the Green from "Quality Row," once was home to one of New Haven's most prominent department stores, the Gamble-Desmond Co.

Or, even more surprising, that the mid-19th-century building, originally called the Insurance Building, was built over Gregson Alley, which ran through the middle of the store because the deed forbade commerce on it.

Later, the wide central area of the mall echoed that restriction.

Taylor, 59, is a Yale University employee who grew up on Valley Street. Last week he presented his collection of photos and postcards, along with friend Bret Bissell's contemporary shots of the same sites, at the New Haven Museum and Historical Society. The sight of what those gorgeous places have become drew groans from the 50 or so audience members.

"You're going to see a lot of pictures that turn into parking lots," Taylor warned.

The show was part nostalgia trip, part history lesson in what can happen as lives move faster and cities race to keep up.

While few buildings last forever, and some aren't worth saving, New Haven "had an unusual combination of challenges," according to William Hosley, executive director of the museum.

In that decade too, Interstate 95 was built, largely on landfill in New Haven Harbor, though it split the City Point neighborhood. And in the 1960s, Interstate 91 sliced through Wooster Square and Fair Haven.

"Never in the state of Connecticut has there ever been a highway engineer who gave a damn about anything historic," Hosley said, noting that even Bushnell Park in Hartford has been proposed as a highway route.

But Taylor's show was also a revelation to many who were too young to remember when horses or even trolleys ran along the city's streets.

He had photos, some dating to right after the Civil War, called stereoviews, revealing that a movie theater stood on Chapel Street, east of Church for just three years, 1912-15. That the immense New Haven Orphan Asylum, designed by renowned architect Henry Austin, stood where Troup School's playground sits. That Hamilton Park, at Whalley and West Park avenues, attracted horse-racing fans and then served as host to Yale football.

There was the immense, Tudor-style Hubinger mansion at Whalley and Pendleton Street. "They were known around the world as the starch kings," back when starch was used for ironing and other uses, Taylor said of the Hubingers.

There was Hemmingway Pond, where the Hygienic Ice Co. harvested its product and where Bella Vista senior housing now sits. There was a photo of a longhorn steer in East Rock Park (why is a mystery) and a picture of long-gone, ritzy York Square, replaced by Payne Whitney Gym and two Yale colleges. "It was like Jackson Square in New Orleans," Taylor said.

New Haven still has mansions, some of which now house law offices or Yale classrooms. But no longer is there the Hillhouse mansion, which looked out over the street of the same name from its northern end.

"When I first saw this picture I said it doesn't look like New Haven. It looks like some Southern plantation in South Carolina," Taylor said. But the family decreed that it could never be occupied by anyone other than a Hillhouse, guaranteeing its demise.

And there was the President William Howard Taft residence, near Division Street. "It's now a plaque," Taylor said. "At least it isn't a parking lot."

Perhaps no loss is as ironic as that of the Joseph Sheffield House, across from St. Mary's Church on Hillhouse Avenue, the home of two major city architects. It was originally the home of Ithiel Town, who designed Center Church and Trinity Church, both on the Green. It was expanded by his student, Henry Austin.

The house was demolished in 1957 and now is the site of an aluminum-sided annex to the Dunham Laboratory.

For some who attended, the pictures brought back cherished memories. "I remembered the flea market on Oak Street that my dad took me to when I was just an itty-bitty thing," said Lily Flannigan of Milford. Oak Street is the anti-urban renewal icon, torn down for Route 34, which was never finished.

Elizabeth Neuse of Hamden said she believed those who built the highways knew they were paving over history. "They knew what the devastation was there. They cut the east side from the west side, so State Street was radically changed," she said.

"It's as if we have no sense of history," said Joan Hunt of North Haven. "Everything has to be new to be of value."

But while the past always will remain so, Hosley said there's value in remembering what once was.

"They key is what do you do with what you've got left," Hosley said. "Do we embrace it, cherish it, tell people about it?"

He called it "a fundamental human need to have a sense of rootedness. In a world entirely new, I think there's a little sense of alienation actually that's not natural."